Do you like solving problems?

Strange news today, Monday 6th July 2015, from the Large Hadron Collider experiment at CERN, Geneva. Scientists are reporting very high-energy collision events in the LHC detectors when the particle beams are switched off! The Director General of CERN has described everyone as ‘excited but baffled’.

Later today CERN has promised to release their first data set to the world community and are inviting scientists world wide to work on the meaning of the mystery.

No translation of the signal has yet been made and as a result of this the particle physicists will release their data in stages to registered members of the public at 10am daily from 6th-10th July 2015.

Can you help #BreakTheCode ?

We need teams of 2-5 students to crack the code and WIN up to £300 in Amazon Vouchers!

To set the scene here is a sample signal for you to have a go at it consists of a modulated radio wave labelled as 1 for a period of high amplitude and 0 for low amplitude (we will give you more detail of the signal in the real challenge but for the moment what message is lurking in here?). The signal has long periods of 10,10,10 but then changes for a period to

10,10,0000001000000100000001100000010100

000011100000010110000001101000

000100010000001001100000010111

00000011101000000,10,10,10

Can you work out what the aliens are trying to communicate? (Hint, it has something to do with Maths…). Find the answer and explanation here.